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Hiring

You’re not required to print handbook in Spanish

04/01/2006

Q. If an employee speaks Spanish and doesn’t understand English, am I required to have my handbooks and other policies translated into Spanish? Is the handbook valid if the employee signs but does not understand the content? —A.B., California

Illegal workers’ presence continues to grow

04/01/2006

Undocumented immigrants now make up almost 5 percent of the U.S. work force, according to a new Pew Hispanic Center study. The number of people living illegally in the country rose by at least 400,000 last year …

Don’t let applicants use your job offer to earn a raise

04/01/2006

Most of your job candidates sincerely want the job. But others may simply try to use your offer as a tool to negotiate a higher salary from their current bosses or other potential employers. Try to determine early on whether job candidates are just using you as a bargaining chip. You can save lots of time by dismissing candidates who were never truly interested …

Recruit online or die: Web hiring hits new milestone

04/01/2006

For the first time, the Internet is producing more than half of all new hires. A Booz Allen Hamilton survey shows that 51 percent of all new hires in 2005 came via some form of Internet recruiting connection …

Smaller organizations: Promote your size in recruiting

04/01/2006

A CollegeGrad.com survey of 500 recent college graduates asked, "Which size company you’d most like to work for?" The response: 70 percent favored small to midsize companies …

Don’t Get Stuck With ‘Dud’ Interns

03/01/2006

If you use summer interns, it’s hunting time. Experts suggest asking the following questions to determine how students make decisions and manage work and deadlines …

Strong new economic numbers signal upward pressure on wages

03/01/2006

Several important economic indicators released last month suggest that wage growth and a tighter labor market are just around the corner …

Know the Legal Boundaries of Employee Lie-Detector Testing

03/01/2006

In most cases, requiring private-sector employees to take polygraph tests will create more harm than good. That’s because the Employee Polygraph Protection Act makes it illegal to "require, request, suggest or cause an employee or prospective employee to take or submit to any lie-detector test," except in limited circumstances …

Keep ‘Customer Preference’ Out of Your Hiring Criteria

02/01/2006

Make sure your hiring managers understand that basing hiring decisions on the prejudices of your customer base is a sure way to land in court. Applicants’ race, age, sex or religion should always be irrelevant. Courts won’t be swayed by claims that customer preferences forced your hiring hand …

Hiring licensed applicants? Check for violations that revoke the license

02/01/2006

When hiring people who need to possess certain licenses, make sure you do more than just check that the applicant holds the license. Your application process should include a background check into any violations that could lead to a license revocation …